This week, Roy noticed that his Grandpa's cookie jar was empty. Now, Roy has a deal with his Grandpa, that he always keeps the cookie jar which he gave to him as a birthday present a few years ago brimming with homemade biscuits. It was a big promise to make when he gave Grandpa the jar, because it means he is always trying to find good recipes for biscuits, and having to find the time to bake them. Recently, he came across this recipe for chocolate chip cookies in one of his old cookbooks. It dates from 1942, during the Second World War, and with its mix of brown and white sugar and chocolate and nuts, promises to be a tasty treat. So this week, Roy Creates War-time Chocolate Chip Cookies.
You Will Need:
- 250 grams of chocolate. Roy used dark chocolate, but you can use whatever you prefer (The original recipe calls for a block of chocolate, cut into chunks, but feel free to just use chocolate chips - these weren't available when the recipe was written)
- 125 grams of butter or margarine (this recipe actually calls for shortening, which is animal fat, but Roy just used margarine and it worked fine. During the War, ingredients were rationed so you wouldn't have 'wasted' butter on baking, especially when you had a jar of dripping beside the stove. To find out more about dripping, click here)
- 1/2 cup of white sugar
- 1/4 cup of brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
- 1 and 1/2 cups of flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
- 1/2 cup of chopped nuts. You can use whatever nuts you like. Roy likes to use walnuts or almonds in these recipes.
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius
- Line baking trays with baking paper, or grease the trays with extra butter or margarine and set aside.
- In a clean, dry bowl, cream the butter and sugars together until the mix is well combined. You can use electric beaters if you like, but Roy found a wooden spoon worked just fine.
- Sift the flour, salt and baking soda together.
(Note: Originally, this recipe called for the flour to be sifted once on its own and then remeasured and sifted with the other ingredients. This was probably to remove creepy crawlies, lumps and impurities!)
- In a small bowl, whisk the egg and vanilla essence together. Add these to the butter and sugar and mix them in.
- Add half the flour to the butter, sugar and eggs, mix and then add the rest of the flour and mix thoroughly.
- Stir in the chocolate and nuts and make sure they are evenly distributed.
- Place teaspoons of the mix onto baking trays (Roy likes to put about 9 per tray) and flatten them with your fingers or a fork
- Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are golden.
- Let the biscuits cool on a wire rack and then store them in an airtight container.
- Enjoy!
- This recipe makes about 4 dozen